Thursday, December 5, 2013

The Mortal Sea

Until the twentieth century, it was commonly believed that
the oceans, filled with vast quantities of fish, were immortal.It was impossible for mere humans to ever
make a dent in the sea’s enormous bounty.Similarly, iron miners once believed that the Lake Superior lodes could
be mined for eternity.The white pines
of the region were so numerous that it would be impossible to cut them all
down.Incredible fantasies are common
among folks who are blissfully ignorant of eco-history, and don’t understand
the reality of fish mining, mineral mining, forest mining, soil mining.

A society unaware of eco-history is like an elder lost in an
Alzheimer’s fog.He doesn’t recognize
his wife or children, and has no memory of who he is, where he is, or what he’s
done.History turns on floodlights, sharply
illuminating the path of our journey, making the boo-boos stand out like sore
thumbs.It’s more than a little
embarrassing, but if we can see the pitfalls, we’re less likely to leap into them.In theory, we are capable of learning from
our mistakes.

Jeffrey Bolster is a history professor who once loved to fish.He realized that the Hall of History
desperately needed more illumination on humankind’s abusive relationship with
the oceans, because it was a tragicomedy of endlessly repeated self-defeating mistakes.He wrote The
Mortal Sea, which focused on the rape of the North Atlantic — and
he quit fishing.

In prehistoric Western Europe, many folks congregated along
the water’s edge.They harvested
shellfish from the sea, but most of their fish came from rivers and
estuaries.Following the transition to
agriculture and metal tools, their population grew and grew.Forests were cut, fields were plowed, and
streams were loaded with eroded soil, livestock wastes, human sewage, and
industrial discharges.Hungry mobs got too
good at catching too many fish with too many traps.England passed the Salmon Preservation Act in
1285, but it was little enforced and generally ignored.

Meanwhile, Viking innovations resulted in boat designs that
were excellent for travelling the open seas.They made it possible to aggressively pursue saltwater seafood, which
was incredibly abundant.Vikings learned
to air-dry cod, which could be stored for years, and provide sustenance for
long voyages of walrus hunting, auk killing, raping, and pillaging.Before long, all coastal communities started
building seaworthy boats, and hauling in the cod, mackerel, herring, and so
on.The human population grew, and
marine life diminished.

In the sixteenth century, when Europeans explored the
American shoreline, they were astonished by the abundance of sea life.They observed hundreds of thousands of
walruses, which could grow up to 2,600 pounds (1,180 kg), critters that were nearly
extinct at home.In those days, the oil
industry was based on whales, walruses, and seals.

Halibut could grow to 700 pounds (317 kg).There were sturgeons more than 600 pounds
(272 kg), and cod five feet long (1.5 m).One lad caught 250 cod in an hour, with just four hooks.They killed seabirds like there was no
tomorrow, using many for fish bait.Lobsters were huge and plentiful, but their flesh spoiled quickly, so
they were fed to hogs, used for bait, and spread on fields for fertilizer.

Maine and northward was home to the Mi’kmaqs and Malecites,
who got 90 percent of their calories from sea life.Their population was not supersized by
agriculture.They had no metal tools or
high tech boats, nor a spirituality in which humans were the masters of the
universe.For some reason, they had
failed to destroy their ecosystem.Then,
they were discovered, and the whites went crazy with astonishing greed.“By 1800 the northwest Atlantic was beginning
to resemble European seas.”Where’s the
fish?

Between America and Europe, the boreal North Atlantic had
been among the world’s most productive fishing grounds.The bulk of the book discusses how clever
white folks skillfully transformed unimaginable abundance into an aquatic
disaster area.In the waters off Maine,
Peak Cod occurred around the Civil War, long before industrial fish
mining.By 1875, writers were
speculating about the extinction of menhaden, lobster, halibut, eider, shad,
salmon, mackerel, and cod.

The fish mining industry was driven by a desperate arms
race.Hand-line fishing had been the
norm since the Middle Ages.Each
fisherman set four to twenty-eight baited hooks.Then, geniuses invented long-line fishing,
which used 4,000 hooks.More fish were
caught, and more money was made.By
1870, some fishers were setting 63 miles of lines with 96,000 baited hooks.

By 1880, geniuses were delighted to discover that gill nets
could triple the haul — and they eliminated the need for bait, which was
getting scarce and expensive.For
mackerel mining, the new purse seines were fabulous.They used nets to surround an entire school
of fish, and could land 150,000 per day.In 1905 came steam-powered otter trawls — huge nets dragged across the sea
floor that caught everything.Only 45
percent of the fish landed were kept.Unmarketable fish were tossed back dead, including juveniles of
marketable species.Millions of dead
juveniles did not grow into mature fish, reproduce, and maintain the viability
of the species.

Throughout the long gang rape of the North Atlantic, there
were always voices urging caution and conservation, but they never ran the show.As more and more capital poured into fish
mining enterprises, resistance to regulation increased.The one and only objective for fat cats was maximizing
short-term profits.Government bureaucrats
who monitored the industry experimented with many interesting programs for
increasing fish stocks — everything except for reducing fishing pressure.

New technology expanded the market for seafood.Salting and drying were replaced by keeping
fish on ice, and shipping them to market by rail.Later, canneries created even bigger demand
for fish.The first floating fish
factory was launched in 1954, and was followed by many more.These boats had assembly lines for gutting,
cleaning, and filleting the fish.The
fillets were quick frozen, for indefinite storage.Waste was turned to fishmeal, another source
of profit.

In 1992, the cod landings in Canada vanished, and the fishery
was closed.The U.S. closed fishing on
Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine.“The
impossible had occurred.People had
killed most of the fish in the ocean.”Folks had been overfishing since Viking days, but industrial fishing put
the process into overdrive.The cod show
no signs of recovery.

Bolster concluded that the way to avoid unsustainable
harvests was to adopt the precautionary approach, which meant always selecting
the least destructive option.This was
an excellent idea, for a world ruled by pure reason.Maybe we should contemplate phasing out all
commercial fishing, because history is clear: any enterprise having to do with
the accumulation of personal property, wealth, and social status tends to turn
ambitious folks into insatiable parasites with no respect for the future. Actually, the industry is working hard to
terminate itself — before oceanic acidification beats it.

One more thing before I go.Some folks have dreams of replacing today’s maritime fleet with zero
emission sailing ships, but they don’t remember the downside.Bolster warns us, “Fishing made coal mining
look safe.No other occupation in
America came close to the deep-sea fisheries for workplace mortality.” In just Gloucester, from 1866 to 1890, more
than 380 schooners and 2,450 men were lost at sea.When powerful squalls race in, sailboats are
hard to control, and very dangerous.

Over the centuries, interregional commerce has made many fat
cats fatter, but it’s also led to many catastrophes, like the spread of bubonic
plague, cholera, malaria, influenza, measles, smallpox, rinderpest, potato
blight, chestnut blight, assorted empires, and on and on.Countless millions have died as an unintended
consequence of long-distance travel.It
isn’t necessary for a sustainable future.

Bolster, W. Jeffrey, The
Mortal Sea — Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail, The Belknap
Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012.

Well it is quite long, but it's the only book I've encountered with actual information about how civilization reacted to climate crisis, as opposed to just conjecture about what might happen. I have a few other suggestions if you are interested - "The Lost Art of Finding Our Way" by John Huth, "Stung!" by Lisa-Ann Gershwin (about jellyfish and the terrible shape the oceans are in), and "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber. Sorry If you've reviewed these already. I'm continuing to enjoy your reviews, thank you for your work.